Chicken & Gnocchi Soup

Winter has been making one last effort (or at least I hope it's the last effort) to maintain a hold on the weather around here. It's been cold and windy and not quite sunny. In other words, it's still perfect soup weather. I decided to adapt another Pinterest recipe that I found. It was a copycat version of Olive Garden's chicken and gnocchi soup, which I really enjoy. I upped the amount of gnocchi in the recipe to make it more of a meal, but if you're serving it as an actual soup course, feel free to cut it back down to just 16 ounces. Justin wasn't a huge fan of this soup--he said it tasted canned, which is really bizarre since everything is made from fresh ingredients. Only the gnocchi came in any sort of a package, and I seriously doubt that would give it a canned flavor. I think he's just weird. I loved this soup and since Justin apparently doesn't want to have it for dinner again, I will definitely make it again for lunch sometime.

Chicken & Noodles

My younger sister is getting married next month, and I've been helping her with some of the paper goods that she needs (invitations, place cards, programs, etc.) for the wedding and reception. For one of the projects, we were discussing her reception menu, and she mentioned chicken and noodles. I've been craving chicken and noodles ever since then, so I finally gave in and made some. I didn't actually have a chicken and noodles recipe of my own, so I tried out one that I found online. While it wasn't a perfect recipe, it was a good first attempt. Next time I need to find a way to make it saucier. I want a thick, creamy sauce, almost like a gravy but not quite, on my chicken and noodles, and this just didn't quite do it for me. The flavor was good, but I just need to figure out the sauce.

That being said, I still ate it all up, and Justin liked it a lot, too. He compared it to chicken noodle soup without all the broth, and since that's pretty much how he wants his soup, he was completely fine with this recipe. Sometime down the road I'll give it another try, but for now, I thought I'd go ahead and share the recipe with you anyway. Be forewarned though; this makes a huge pot full of chicken and noodles. It all just barely fit in my 8 quart pot.

Chopped Challenge #7: Apple Cobbler with Peanut Butter-Cinnamon Ice Cream

For our seventh Chopped challenge, Justin decided to give me cinnamon, pancake mix, half-and-half, and Peanut Butter Captain Crunch. Taking the obvious route, I chose to make a dessert. (We had salads for dinner, in case you're curious.) Cinnamon and peanut butter both made me think of apples, so I settled on making an apple pie. I used green apples because I like the bit of sourness paired with all that sugar, but you can use your favorite apples instead.

Initially I wanted to grind the Peanut Butter Captain Crunch in my food processor to use it in a graham cracker-like crust, but I wasn't sure how well that would work out when baking with a bit of a runny filling in it. Graham cracker crusts are usually used for thicker fillings like pudding or cheesecake, and so I wasn't sure if the crust would get soggy from the apple filling. Instead, I decided to combine the pancake mix and the ground cereal in a streusel-style topping.

Chicken Breakfast Biscuits with Gravy

When Justin and I were trying to come up with dinner ideas, he randomly asked me, "Why doesn't anyone ever put chicken and eggs together?" I've seen a few omelets with chicken on menus before, but he's right that it's not very common. I don't know exactly why that is, but I do know that these breakfast biscuits we decided to make with both of them are quite delicious. I think they're going to be make frequent appearances on our meal lists.

When trying to decide how we were going to combine the two, I immediately thought of some sort of sandwich because at many fast food restaurants you can now get chicken breakfast sandwiches, in addition to the usual egg ones. If we just combine the two, voila! To tie it together a bit more, I decided to make some white gravy to go on the sandwiches--Justin's a little iffy about eggs and white gravy, but after giving this recipe a taste with just a little of the gravy, he piled on the rest of his portion of gravy and happily gobbled it all down.

Macaroni & Cheese Muffins

Ok, so these aren't really muffins. They're more like muffin-shaped baked mac and cheese. Because of that, they would really make great party food; you can just pick them up and eat them--no fork needed! They're also good for when you just want something a little different and fun. I made them to go with some creamy red pepper and gouda soup. A couple of the ingredients overlap nicely between the recipes. I hate buying something like half-and-half and then only using half a cup of it with the rest going to waste. Therefore, this recipe and the soup recipe together use up all of the half-and-half and gouda that I bought. You don't have to make them together, but that's part of the reason that I did.

Chicken & Dumplings

The weather has finally cooled off enough here in Virginia for me to start making soup. I love soup. I could almost eat soup every night and not get tired of it--there are just so many wonderful options!

I have this Paul Prudhomme cookbook (If you don't know Paul Prudhomme, you should check him out; he's one of the quintessential Cajun cooking authorities.) that has a recipe for Creole chicken and dumplings. Justin and I like the idea of it, so we thought we'd make our own version. I started with Prudhomme's recipe which has you begin by frying the chicken, which gives it great flavor and texture. I've never had fried chicken in a soup before, but I really enjoyed it. From there, I adapted my usual chicken and dumpling recipe, and altogether it morphed into what you see here. It was really delicious, and Justin and I are both looking forward to making this again soon.

Crab Pot Pie

I don't often watch Paula Deen on TV. I find her slightly grating. I don't know why; I just do. There's also the fact that just watching her cook makes me fatter. For whatever reason, one afternoon a couple weeks ago I put on an episode of her show, and she was making crab pot pie. That's not something I'd ever considered before. Chicken or turkey, sure, but crab? How have I not thought of this?

I used Paula's recipe more as an idea and a jumping off point than as any sort of guide. This recipe actually more closely resembles Justin's mom's chicken pot pie recipe, though it's not directly based on that either. Basically, Justin and I sat down and said, what vegetables are required for pot pie and what vegetables would be tasty with crab? From there we narrowed it down to those included in this recipe. If I made it again, I don't think I'd change a thing (other than to maybe use an egg wash on the pie crust to make it come out more golden brown). It was really weird for the first few bites, but once I got over the expectation of poultry flavors, I really liked this.

Chopped Challenge #2, Part 2: Fried Leek Biscuits

*I'm splitting this post into two parts, one each for the entree and the side dish.

To compliment the turkey and dumplings that Justin made for Chopped Challenge #2, he also made fried leek biscuits. You could really do this with whatever you wanted to fry. You could fry up some jalapenos and make spicy biscuits. You could fry up some apples and cinnamon and make dessert biscuits. You could fry up some bacon and make--be right back, I've got bacon biscuits to make...

Chopped Challenge #2, Part 1: Turkey and Dumplings

*I'm splitting this post into two parts, one each for the entree and the side dish.

For Justin's first turn cooking for our Chopped challenges, I gave him ground turkey, condensed cream of chicken soup, refrigerated biscuits in a can, and leeks. It's not a terribly difficult, off-the-wall set of ingredients, but I figured he could come up with something fun to do with them. I wasn't wrong.